Dell 24" LCD for $1,199

February 17, 2005
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Ohhhh… check out the new Dell 2405FPW Wide screen LCD that ExtremeTech just reviewed. I am such a sucker for big, high-resolution displays. I was one of the first on the block to have an NEC 6FG back in the day; I still have the hulking monster too! Right now I have a Dell 20” 2100FP 1600×1200 LCD in front of me and at work I’m lucky enough to have TWO of them in a …Continue reading →

I need a new printer

February 17, 2005
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My trusty old Epson Stylus Ex printer has died. Looks like the black print head died and I’m skeptical getting it serviced would be worth while given its 5 or 6 years old… Actually sounds like a great excuse to buy a new gadget! Our other printer is an HP G85xi mutli-function. Does a fine job of photos for kids projects, scanning, faxing, etc… It’s upstairs by the kitchen where my wife & the kids can …Continue reading →

MindManager feature request

February 17, 2005
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Here’s a feature request for the team at MindJet responsible for the fantastic MindManager X5 product I wrote about last week; presented as a mind map of course!

Bluetake BT500 Bluetooth mouse and Windows XP SP2

February 16, 2005
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I have a Dell Insipron 8600 laptop with built-in Bluetooth support. The touchpad is not bad, but when I’m doing heavy work in MindManager I am moving the cursor around a lot. I wanted a mouse I could take with me to meetings and the road… For a while I carried around a tiny USB mouse someone had given me as swag but it was corded and the wire was always in the way. Then I bought a Microsoft …Continue reading →

Mapping your mind with MindManager X5

February 9, 2005
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A few months ago a I happened to glance over at a co-worker’s laptop during a meeting. He had some app running that was showing a wild looking spider like diagram that I had never seen before. I asked him what the app was and he said “MindManager. I use it for keeping track of my thoughts and ideas. You can download a trial from www.mindjet.com”. I followed his advice and my life changed as …Continue reading →

Blobservations: Windows Server, Home Edition

January 24, 2005
Smart Home
5 Comments

Rick Hallihan presents a really nice vision of what a Windows based home server would look like in Blobservations: Windows Server, Home Edition. At my house I use Windows Server 2003 to manage all of my client PCs. For example I can easily change all machine’s IE security settings (and prevent my kids from changing them back) centrally via Group Policy. Today there are some problems with this in the home, namely some really cool …Continue reading →

Shadow copies – a peek under the hood

December 15, 2004
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Adi Oltean talks about one of my favorite Windows technologies: VSS in Shadow copies – a peek under the hood. Amazingly powerful stuff. He also talks about the command line interface for VSS and bunches of other really good Windows internals stuff on his blog. Such good stuff that I’ve added him to my blog roll.

Bluetooth GPS, Smartphone, Channel9, Oh My!

December 13, 2004
Coding, Smart Home
1 Comment

Channel9 has posted a wicked-cool video of Alex Kipman demoning using Visual Studio to write slick SmartPhone app that talks to both the GPS and MapPoint via a web-service. Who says Microsoft can’t innovate? What other platform provides anywhere near the richness and integration across devices?!?! I purchased my Pharos GPS reciever as part of buying Microsoft Streets & Trips 2005. I bought it at the Microsoft Company Store for a silly low price (you …Continue reading →

W2K3 SP1 and XP Pro x64 RC1

December 7, 2004
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Today we (Microsoft) released the release candidate 1 (RC1) of Windows Server 2003 SP1, which you can download here. Being in the Windows Server group I’ve been runing interim builds of W2K3 SP1 for a looong time. I even have it running on all of my servers at home. In addition my main workstation at work is an AMD Athlon 64 machine running Windows XP Pro x64 Edition which is derived from the same code tree. …Continue reading →

The BEST Pacific Northwest Snow Report Website

December 7, 2004
Skiing
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http://carismata.com/snowreports A great summary of Crystal, Stevens, Mt Baker, Whistler, and Alpental. Works very well from Windows Powered Smartphones and Pocket PCs. I’ve been using this since early last season and it’s just great. Below is a live pic of Steven’s Pass. When I posted this it was snowing…what’s it doing now?

Best optical illusion yet?

December 6, 2004
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Mike Hall posted probably the best optical illusion I’ve ever seen. Wow. In the same spirit of ridiculous humor he says I used to be one of his heros  (although I think he was being serious).

Car Blogs

December 3, 2004
Cars
11 Comments

I’m a car nut. For the last 7 years my passion has been about my ’88 Porsche 911 Carrera coupe and my ’95 BMW 540 M-Sport 6-Speed. It’s high time I started posting the occasional blog entires about my cars. You’ll find these posts under the Car category… While reading posts on the M-Sport mailing list I noticed that Ren Finley, another M-Sport fanantic (Ren’s a bit more of a purist than me so he …Continue reading →

My motherboard died

November 23, 2004
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Nothing’s free. Ain’t it true. A while back I wrote that I had received a free Epox 8KDA3+ mobo and Athlon 3700+ CPU and that I was building a new workstation at home around it. Well I built it, and it was working fine. Mostly. I had a few weird crashes that I thought I had resolved by going to the latest GeForce video drivers. Some problems were resolved, but I still had some odd …Continue reading →

My team

November 20, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Chris Gray on my team is playing with IIS at home. He’s got a little moblog app that automatically takes pics from his PocketPC phone and uploads them. This pic was taken right before we had an executive review for our project. Charlie, Chris, Sergey, Todd, Lee…  

Community Server Beta One

November 18, 2004
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Community Server (formerly .Text) Beta One has finally been released. I’m downloading and installing it now at work to use as an internal team blog. I love .Text and can’t wait to see how Scott has improved things in this new version.

Crazy expensive home server

November 18, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
8 Comments

Sheesh. I thought Linux devices were supposed to be cheaper… Engadget writes about the Niveus A/V Storage Server which is basically just a Linux based NAS box with 1TB of RAID 5 storage in it. I can’t even tell if it actually supports SMB or not. Sure it’s pretty and fanless but why does it cost $3K? If you think this box sounds cool to you, I suggest you instead consider what you could do …Continue reading →

Killer home server deal

November 18, 2004
Smart Home
3 Comments

Slickdeals.com is showing that you can now get a DELL PowerEdge SC420 P4-2.8GHz, 80GB system for $289+tax w/free shipping. These SC series machines from DELL make great home servers. They are plenty powerful, expandable, and amazingly very quiet.

How Many Gadgets Do You Carry?

November 15, 2004
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Furrygoat asks how many gadgets people carry. Seems like his model is similar to mine. I carry a SmartPhone (I have the new Audiovox SMT 5600 which I just love), a 16MB USB keychain (hooked to my Microsoft card key), and when at work I carry my Acer C110TCi Tablet PC to and from meetings. In my car I hava a Jabra Bluetooth wireless headset. At the gym I use a Rio Cali Sport portable audio …Continue reading →

A File Server…in Your Living Room?

November 15, 2004
Smart Home
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Via BusinessWeek a good article on home servers: That’s right, with most homes nowadays having multiple computers and lots of files to share, these new low-cost devices can do wonders Want to watch movies, control your stereo’s music, and back up your computer files from any PC in the house? A cheap server computer, a scaled-down version of the pricey machines locked away in corporate data centers, might be the best way to manage your family’s …Continue reading →

Polar Bears win it all!

November 15, 2004
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The girls did it! We won the LWYSA Girls U-11 championship today, beating the Cougars 2-1. We also beat the Cougars yesterday 3-1 (the Cougars then won the bottom bracket by beating the Shooting Stars this morning). In fine fashion the girls had prepared a jug of water and let me have it after the game. What a blast!